Important Quotations Explained
1. I
got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin'
was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one
mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own
way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the
holi-ness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella
for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole
shebang—that's right, that's holy.
2. The
last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds
aching to create beyond the single need—this is man. To build a
wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam
to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something
of the wall, the house the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting,
to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike
any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond
his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his
accomplishments.
3. “We're
Joads. We don't look up to nobody. Grampa's grampa, he fit in the
Revolution. We was farm people till the debt. And then—them people.
They done somepin to us. Ever' time they come seemed like they was
a-whippin' me—all of us. An' in Needles, that police. He done somepin
to me, made me feel mean. Made me feel ashamed. An' now I ain't
ashamed. These folks is our folks—is our folks. An' that manager,
he come an' set an' drank coffee, an' he says, 'Mrs. Joad' this,
an' 'Mrs. Joad' that—an' 'How you getting' on, Mrs. Joad?'” She
stopped and sighed. “Why, I feel like people again.”
4. Says
one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an'
he foun' he didn't have no soul that was his'n. Says he foun' he
jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't
no good, 'cause his little piece of a soul wasn't no good 'less
it was with the rest, an' was whole.
5. Wherever
they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever
they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why,
I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'—I'll be in the
way kids laugh when they're hungry n' they know supper's ready.
An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses
they build—why, I'll be there. See? God, I'm talkin' like Casy.
Comes of thinkin' about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.
